I've considered my failures this year with my plots and the affects the drought had on them. Moving forward to next year I am beginning to put a plan of action together rather than wait until the last minute. In Feb, and March I'll visit my property with a chain saw and other cutting/trimming tools. my plan is to clear out a larger area (3/4 acre) for my plot and get started early. I have a sort of dried up creek bed/ low area that runs through the area I would like to plant. This plot will sit about 100 yards from a very large field. What should I plant in here to aid me in my success during the 2012 season? Should I plant clover for the summer then disc it under and replant for the fall? I'm so confused. Will corn grow in the woods without 100% sun? Or would oats be my best chance. I tried lettuce and turnips, but after they got about 6 inches high they died in the drought Months without rain.
Clover isn't your best choice for summer food. It goes dormant during hot dry weather. A shaded plot in the woods isn't going to produce any corn. I've had good luck with clover in semi shaded areas and you might try some wheat in the fall. A good but little used crop is Buckwheat. That stuff will grow just about anywhere, but it will freeze out after a couple of frosts.
some thoughts to mull over, I have been creating small 1/4 acre or so kill plots inside timber openings. last years was a small high spot in our swamp. I cut all the ash trees out (burn firewood so bonus) then I cut the stumps off as close to the ground as i could. in the early spring I put 5 bags of pellitized lime, 200lbs on it, along with a 50 pound bag of 19-19-19. then I went over it with a ATV disk harrow I built last winter. Immediately seeded it to oats for the summer. Let them grow the 4th of July. Deer fed on them for two months or so. The weekend of the fourth I killed the whole plot with round up, after two weeks I went in and spread another 200 pounds of pelletized lime and 50 pounds of 19-19-19. I disked that in. The oat stubble doubles as a good plow down to enhance the soil. Then around the first week of august I went in and planted a mixture of brassicas. they love nitrogen and grow extremely fast. They can be planted as late as the third week in august in most areas of the country. This helps to avoid drought that will kill new seedlings. the summer rains have ussually returned by mid august. the mixture i used I put together myself, it consisted of Bonar rape, Barnapoli rape, dwarf essex rape, purple top turnips, pasja forage turnip, barkant forage turnip, and appin forage turnip. you can order all of these seeds from welter seed co heres a link. http://welterseed.com/productItems.aspx?id=41&org=0 They were great to do buisness with. Good quality seed to! I will be a repeat customer. The key to brassicas is to give them lots of fertilizer, and not to plant them to thick. They need some space to produce! I plant around 6 pounds to the acre. Small areas say 120 feet by 120 feet, I will broadcast two pounds on. Then I roll it with a lawn roller to set the seed in and watch it grow! Never work brassicas in, you will get the seed to deep and not get a good stand. You could also drag some chain link fence over the seeding to get the seed set. I have even not done anything just left it on top, the rain will push the seed into the soft dirt. I have had great results with this, the deer start in on it at about three weeks and they don't leave it alone until the last root is gone in march! I have heard food plot specialist say it takes several years to get a plot going inside the woods, but I had very good results in year one, the key was the lime and fertilizer. Getting your soil to neutral or close to it will be key to getting results. I will include some picture of the plot. the one from may you can see the oats are around 4 inches tall, deer love young oats! then the august pictures the brassicas are around 3 weeks old, they pounded them all fall. my dad took a nice 3 1/2 yr old 8 off this plot on oct. 31st, turned out well. I used the brush from the tree tops to make a wall and funnel the deer were i wanted them to enter and exit the plot, not where they wanted. Worked out great! If you have any questions feel free to ask. I am not a so called expert, However i have 13 food plots on around 200 acres, I have seen success and failure, but I have found the only way to learn is to try, and when it doesn't work, figure out why it didn't and imporve! I love food plottin and runnin my cameras as much as I love hunting! Well almost as much! lol
Forgot to mention if you look at picture number two you will see where I made a scraping limb by hanging a tree top out over the plot. Do this in your food plot, kick the dirt open under it with your boot and they will open it up and make a great scrape out of it. That scrap was still being used regularly as of december 20th, that was the last time I was back in there.
Andrew.....do you have any pics of deer in the plot just before you tilled the oats up? Would love to see what it looks like.
Dan, sorry i don't I didn't run my camera down there after around first of June, I know this, they were pounding it! lol I almost considered just leaving the oat and letting them go, That might of just given me an idea. I might try this in one plot this year. let them go all the way to ripe, round up them to kill weeds and broadcast my brassicas into the standing oats. let deer eat the oats of and then brassicas. Think it will work?
Thanks for the assist Andrew. I'll probably PM you later on, as spring draws near. I have a ton of work to do down on my little paradise. This property is all bottom land and it will most likely be completely under water come April and May. This was my issue last spring I couldn’t do anything because of the water, and by the time the water all dried up Late June, I got down there and planted and then no rain until August. Last year was my first attempt at a kill plot, but I learned so much. I now know not to even consider going down with my walk behind tiller when it’s 106 outside. I am guessing the lack of Nitrogen in the ground was a major contributor to my failure with the turnips and radishes. I never had the PH checked on my ground since the natural grasses and other veggies seemed to grow way over my head and that is by early June. I figured that if this stuff can grow anything can?? I did however, buy a very large bag of lime and will just work it in the ground regardless, along with fertilizers. Another idea I came across was to disc up your trails between stands/plots or what not and plant them in clover. The idea is to create a nature funnel from one location to another. Not sure if it will work, but worth the try either way. All in all I plan on creating at least 3 kill plots on my 60 acres of thick timber. I’ll try different crops in each of them.
@pastorandrew..... Im thinking of creating my first food plot this year and cant decide what I wanna plant. I want something that really attractive to deer and lasts fairly long throughout the fall/ winter. Any ideas? Ive looked into corn, soybeans, brassicas, oats, sugar beets, everything but i just dont know what to plant. Thanks.
I have been wondering what to plant in the spring in a couple of plots that I will turn over in July, so I may give the oats a try. I would rather have something in them than to let them just sit all spring and early summer doing nothing. No idea if that will work really. I would think the oats would stunt the growth of the brassicas and your plot wouldn't be as thick.
@ Dan, yeah the oats really seemed to work great. That was my thought to, why have nothing growing, oats will help keep weeds down then when I round up everything what weeds had mad it with the oats were killed off, the result was a weed free fall plot. I don't do anything special as far as seed, I just buy some oats off a horse farmer. They ussually have them in abundance for horse feed, I plant some plots with them in the fall, they are still green under the snow. those I plant first week of september. Good luck! @ Illinoishunter102 - It depends on what you are looking for, size of plot and deer density, etc. are you looking for something to bow hunt over in october and november? Gun hunt over in december? It all depends. I have realitively small plots for all differn't season. The best thing to do is figure out when you have the most success on your property, and try to plan your food plots around that. For me I have my best success the first week of october, then second best would be the rut/late season. I plan my plots around being super attractive for the last week of september through mid november, they are ussually completely consumed by that point. So I would say, think about when you will hunt most, when you have had the most success and invest in food plots that will be productive during that time frame! The key to success is to build upon what you alreaddy are seeing success in. For myself I hunt smaller acerage. I have to manipulate the deer to where I want them. So I build brush walls, give them plenty of waterholes and offer super attractive food sources. Then I monitor whats happening with my trail cameras. I never place a camera anywhere I can't drive to with my kids in the car. this keeps me out of the deers core areas, as well as limits my pressure I put on them. Deer don't mind a vehicle, they freak out when someone walks through there area. (at least in my experience) I run my cameras on the plots, the two weeks leading up to season and hope I get a pattern on a mature buck. So I dedicate most of my season to the first 7 days of october. We have so much pressure put on by the neighbors and they hunt right on the property lines, that after the second week it can be a ghost town for deer sightings most everything goes nocturnal. So I am fairly aggressive in week one, then I lay off till the rut unless i find a pattern that can be exploited. I neverever under any circumstances hunt the bedding areas before the rut though. you want those real fresh. Sorry to write so much, it just you can really dictate your food plot to exactly what and when you want to be hunting it. Hope what i said revealed that a little bit. I have a 40 acre parcel that I manage intensly. prior to 2007 we had only ever taken one mature buck off it. Since 2007, We have taken 7 mature bucks off the property. The future is looking brighter every year. So set back invision your property, where are the deer during the early season, how bout during the lull, the rut, and what about late season. When does your property have the most deer on it, when do you hunt most, you figure up those, and then figure up what you want to plant. Standing soybeans and corn are the ultimate late season food source, however if you don't have deer in the late season, then they are the wrong thing to plant. I can't groe them in the plots the deer consume them by july! lol I grow turnips for my late season plots. Once you know what season you want that food source to attract deer to it, i can recommend you a little more info. Hope this was helpful, and I apologize i typed so much. I love this stuff! andrew
Dont worry about the long post! I was looking to have something from the start of the season, (Oct 1) to about Thanksgiving. In my area there is a lot of clover, alfalfa and corn. What do you recommend? Thanks!
I would recommend either a plot of winter oats or brassicas. Oats would be really simple and if you fertilize them really attractive. They are very straight forward, broadcast them on your worked soil, drag them in with a piece of old fence if you have one. They will take off and do the rest. The down side of oats is the older they get the less attractive they can be. Deer love them when they are young though. The brasicas are a little more work, however if you do it right they will provide food from september on through winter or until the bulbs are entirely consumed. I put my own mix together last fall. It consisted of dwarf essex rape, bonar rape, barnapoli rape, barkant forage turnip, appin forage turnip, pasja forage turnip, purple top turnips. On one plot I over seeded with a little wheat. Fridgid forage has a very similar mix they sell called Big and beasty brassicas. If you are doing smaller areas, I would just buy a pre mixed seed from a dealer. I was putting in almost 15 acres of it for myself and others so I put the mix together myself. This would be a really good mix, if the deer in your area no how good brassicas are. they some times can take a year to figure out they love them. once they do, its over, they will be there everyday, all day if they feel safe. They key i have found to brassicas is getting your ph close, and then lots of fertilizer. I have never done soil tests however i know i have a naturally acidic soil. (Its a cedar swamp) SO I give it lots of pelletized lime. The advantage to a mix of brassicas is they grow bulbs, so when the deer have eaten all the greens its not over, they then go in and dig through the snow to get to the turnip bulbs. My food plots right now look like a war zone. they have holes dug all over the place, I am gonna go take a picture so guys can see what i mean. If you have the time and resources to plant a mix of brassicas, I would go for it, if not I would plant the oats. If you have any questions ask away on this site, there is so much wisdom in all the hunters on here.
Hmmmmmmm. How about those foodplots in Mumbai?? Getting any gazelles in the morning hitting the turnips?
I planted my oats on Aug. 12. They were still green, under snow as well. The oats never matured (too much shade) but grew to about a foot tall and came in pretty thick. The deer started really hitting them hard after the acorn frenzy in October. This was my first time making plots. I got a soil sample and followed the directions for fertilizer and lime. I bought 3500 lbs of lime and spread it at 12 tons/acre. My fertilizer was similar to pastorandrew's, it was actually a winterizer from Farm and Fleet. My soil is acidic being in an oak woods. Just the right amount of sand and clay, easy tilling. I am interested in trying brasicas. I like the sound of pastorandrew's mix. Pat Howard has some great plots of brasicas. I'd like to plant more oats early then till them in and plant brasicas later.
